Sloan had already gone, but Lucas found Del in Narcotics, flipping through a reports file.
"Anything good?" Lucas asked.
"Not from me," Del said. He pushed the file drawer shut. "There were meetings all day. The suits were arguing about who's going to do what. I don't think you'll get your surveillance team."
"Why not?"
Del shrugged. "I don't think they'll do it. The suits keep saying that there's nothing on Bekker, except that some dope cop thinks he did it. Meanin' me-and you know what they think about me."
"Yeah." Lucas grinned despite himself. The suits would like to see Del in a uniform, writing tickets. "Is the press conference still on?"
"Two o'clock tomorrow," Del said. "You been out on your net?"
"Yeah. Nothing there. But I talked to a doc at University Hospital, he thinks Bekker might have killed a kid. Maybe two."
"Kids?"
"Yeah. In the cancer ward. I'll use it to jack up Daniel on the surveillance, if I have to."
"Awright," Del said. "Nothing works like blackmail…"
Lucas' answering machine had half a dozen messages, none of them about Bekker. He made two answering calls, checked the phone numbers on the pen register and locked up. City Hall was almost dark and his footfalls echoed through the emptying corridors.
"Davenport…"
He turned. Karl Barlow, a sergeant with Internal Affairs, was walking toward him with a sheaf of papers in his hand. Barlow was small, square-shouldered, square-faced and tightly muscular, like a gymnast. He wore his hair in a jock's crew cut and dressed in white short-sleeved shirts and pleated pants. He always had a plastic pocket protector in his breast pocket, filled with an evenly spaced row of ballpoint pens. He was, he professed, an excellent Christian.
An excellent Christian, Lucas thought, but not good on the streets. Barlow had trouble with ambiguities…
"We need a statement on the brawl the other night. I've been trying…"
"That wasn't a brawl, that was an arrest of a known pimp and drug dealer on a charge of first-degree assault," Lucas said.
"A juvenile, sure. I've been trying to get you at your office, but you're never in."
"I've been working this Bekker murder. Things are jammed up," Lucas said shortly.
"Can't help that," Barlow said, planting one fist on his waist. Lucas had heard that Barlow was a Youth Football coach and had found himself in trouble with parents for insisting that a kid play hurt. "I've got to make an appointment with a court stenographer, so I've got to know when you can do it."
"Give me a couple of weeks."
"That might be too long," Barlow said.
"I'll come in when I can," Lucas said impatiently, trying to get away. "There's no rush, right? And I might bring an attorney."
"That's your right." Barlow moved in closer, crowding, and poked the sheaf of papers at Lucas. "But I want this settled and I want it settled soon. If you get my drift."
"Yeah. I get your drift," Lucas said. He turned back toward Barlow, so they were chest to chest and no more than four inches apart. Barlow had to move back a half-step and look up to meet Lucas' eyes. "I'll let you know when I can do it."
And I'll throw you out the fuckin' window if you give me any shit, Lucas thought. He turned away and went up the steps. Barlow called, "Soon," and Lucas said, "Yeah, yeah…"
He stopped just outside the City Hall doors, on the sidewalk, looked both ways and shook himself like a horse trying to shake off flies. The day had a contrary feel to it. He sensed that he was waiting, but he didn't know for what.
Lucas crossed the street to the parking garage.
CHAPTER 8
Pressure. He opened his fist, felt for the tab in his hand, licked it, felt the acidic cut of the drug as well as the salty taste of his own sweat. Too much? He had to be careful. He couldn't bleed today, he'd be in the car. But then the speed was on him and he stopped thinking about it.
He called Druze from a pay phone.
"We have to risk it," he said. "If I do Armistead tonight, the police will go crazy. Meeting could be tough after this."
"Are the cops still hanging around?" Druze sounded not worried-his emotional range might not reach that far-but concerned. "I mean, Armistead's still on, isn't she?"
"Yes. They keep coming back. They want me, but they've got nothing. Armistead will steer them further away."
"They might get something if they find the guy in the towel," Druze said sullenly.
"That's why we've got to meet."
"One o'clock?"
"Yes."
Stephanie's keepsake photos were stuffed in shoe boxes in the sewing closet, stuck in straw baskets in the kitchen, piled on a drawing table in the study, hidden in desk and bureau drawers. Three leather-bound albums were stacked in the library, photos going back to her childhood. Bekker, nude, stopping frequently to examine himself in the house's many mirrors, wandered through the antiques, hunting the photos. In her chest of drawers, he found a plastic bag for a diaphragm-at first he didn't recognize it for what it was-shook his head and put it back. When he was satisfied that he had all the photos, he fixed himself a sandwich, punched up Carl Orff's Carmina Burana on the CD player, sat in an easy chair and replayed the funeral in his mind.
He had been fine, he thought. The tough-guy cop. He couldn't read the tough guy, but he had Swanson beat. He could sense it. The tough guy, on the other hand… his clothes were too good, Bekker decided.
As he chewed, his eye found a small movement in the far corner of the room. He turned to catch it: another mirror, one of a dozen or so diamond-shaped plates set in the base of a French lamp from the twenties. He moved again, adjusting himself. His eyes were centered in one of the mirrors and, at this distance, looked black, like holes. His genitals were caught in another plate, and he laughed, genuine enjoyment.
"A symbol," Bekker said aloud. "But of what, I don't know." And he laughed again, and did his jig. The MDMA was still on him.
At noon he dressed, pulled on a sweater, loaded the photos into a shopping bag and went out through the breezeway to his car. Could the police be watching him? He doubted it-what else would they expect him to do? Stephanie was already dead; but he'd take no chances.
Out of the garage, he drove carefully through a snake's nest of streets to a small shopping center. No followers. He cruised the center for a few minutes, still watching, bought toilet tissue and paper towels, toothpaste and deodorant and aspirin, and returned to the car. Back through the snake's nest: nothing. He stopped at a convenience store and used the phone on the outside wall.
"I'm on my way."
"Fine. I'm alone."
Druze lived in a medium-rise apartment at the edge of the West Bank theater district. Bekker, still wary, circled the building twice before he left the car on the street, cut through the parking lot and buzzed Druze's apartment.
"It's me," he said. The door opened and he pushed through into the lobby, then took the stairs. Druze was watching a cable-channel show on scuba diving when Bekker arrived. Druze punched the TV out with a remote as Bekker followed him into the apartment.
"Those the pictures?" asked Druze, looking at the bag.
"Yes. I brought everything I could find."
"You want a beer?" Druze said it awkwardly. He didn't entertain; nobody came to his apartment. He had never had a friend before…
"Sure." Bekker didn't care for beer, but enjoyed playing the relationship with Druze.
"Hope he's here," Druze said. He got a bottle of Bud Light from the refrigerator, brought it back and handed it to Bekker, who was kneeling on the front-room carpet, unloading the shopping bag. Bekker turned one of the shoe boxes upside down, and a clump of snapshots fell out on the rug.